


Ghosts Among Us

by Maedelmae



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Apocalypse, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Ben Hargreeves is Alive, Gothic, Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, Psychological Horror, Supernatural Elements, gothic horror, losing ones mind, supernatural horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 11:43:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21118223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maedelmae/pseuds/Maedelmae
Summary: It has been seven months since the end of the world had been averted. With all of his siblings alive, Klaus lies forgotten in his sobriety and begins to slowly lose his mind.





	Ghosts Among Us

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, thank you for clicking on my shitty little one shot. I have not proof read this seeing as it is now 1 in the morning and I have early morning classes in six hours. 
> 
> Anyways, I've had to study Poe and his works in my English class and I couldn't help but make Klaus go through some sort of Gothic horror. It kind of sucks, but I hope you like it.

It had been months since his self-imposed sobriety. It had been months since the not-pocalypse. It had been months since he had relished in true silence. 

Klaus was losing his mind. 

After the apocalypse was avoided with a strong hug between Allison and Vanya in the middle of her requiem power play, Klaus had been scrambling in his sobriety. Five managed to jump back and bring Ben back to life through a long list of complicated physics that apparently worked the same way as when Five himself jumped into 2019. This left Ben in his seventeen year old body, but alive nonetheless. 

Klaus, on the one hand was grateful that Ben got the opportunity to be alive again. After his rant during Klaus’ capture and subsequent torture, Klaus had started to think on some of the selfish things he had done to Ben, even if some of them were of no fault of his (though he does admit that doing drugs every day for over 15 years was his fault). 

On the other hand, Klaus feels terribly selfish. He wishes Ben were still dead sometimes. Purely for the company. For the understanding. 

When Ben came back through Five’s portal alive, it threw everybody for a loop. Especially Klaus who had only just recently gotten sober and had just lost his number one ghost supporter who was there with him unerringly throughout all of the trauma he faced whilst homeless. 

So this leaves Klaus here, seven months later. 

He had felt the symptoms of losing his mind before, how could he not. This time however, might be permanent and Klaus was terrified. 

He heard voices, invisible ghosts. He could feel the veil thinning between life and death. Objects would move around him and he could find no culprit. He couldn’t sleep at night with the wailing and haunting moans of those deceased. 

He took to wandering the halls. 

It felt very apt that he was losing his mind in an old mansion like this. It sounded just like an Edgar Allen Poe story he had read (he loves to read, but his eyes tend to hurt after reading for too long and it is hard to concentrate on a book with ghosts around you deterring your focus). 

He had become very good at dodging his siblings late at night as they hadn’t been seen in a long time. So, he wandered the empty, dark hallways in a silken nightgown. His hair had grown longer in the seven months since his return from Vietnam and the now silky strands curled just below his shoulder making him seem even more like a haunted mistress in a Victorian ghost novel. 

However, it had come to a head one night as he wandered the lone hallways. He had been on the second floor drifting with an unseeing breeze following him and raising the hairs on his arm; the draft blowing his nightgown gently. He hadn’t slept in four days and was exhausted, his eyes unseeing in an attempt to rid himself of his haunters. 

“What are you doing?” The sentence rang out through the once silent hallways. Klaus couldn’t place the voice. He didn’t remember who it belonged to. It had been awhile since he had last heard the voice of a living person and he had become quite deaf in the roaring of the departed. In fact, he had no clue if the voice was even real or not. It could have been one of the silent specters picking on him again as they were wont to do. He did not turn around and continued to drift. 

“Klaus, I’m talking to you. What are you doing?” 

He was coming up on the staircase now. Klaus wondered if he should dare venture downstairs on this evenings wandering session. A slim pale hand lifted gently from his side and propped itself on the banister. 

“Klaus! Can you hear me?” A hand was on his shoulder and he jumped. He was certain the ghosts wouldn’t have been able to touch him as his hands hadn’t been glowing blue.   
He turned around and came face to face with Diego, giving a goofy grin in response to the next thing his brother said, though he had not heard it. He went to turnaround again when his foot slipped from the top stair and his feet tangled up in each other and in the long billowy skirt of his night clothes. 

The next thing Klaus knew, he was falling… down… down… down. A snap and a pop. Pain blossomed on every inch of his body as his journey ended with a sickening, wet crunch. And he knew no more. 

.oOo.

Diego, Ben, and Five had just made their way home from a late late night outing to Griddy’s donuts for some post workout/training carb reload. It was closing in on 1 in the morning and none of them had expected anybody to be up. Vanya tended to go to bed earlier in the evening as she enjoyed waking up with the early morning sunrise. Luther was currently travelling to make up for his lost golden years as a teenager and as a young adult. Currently, he was in the Himalayas, trying to prove to himself that he could make it to the top of Mount Everest. Allison had of course gone back to LA to see her daughter and had been working on ironing out a split custody order with Patrick, granted she had already went through seven months of documented therapy sessions to present to the court. 

All in all, the house should have been empty with the exception of the three boys who had just found their way in. 

Suffice to say, it was pretty jarring to all three of the brothers to find Klaus mindlessly wandering through the halls. At first he was unrecognizable. They hadn’t seen Klaus in a couple of months at least due to conflicting schedules and levels of business. 

“What are you doing?” Diego called out to the intruder, a knife in his hands at the ready. The person kept wandering, ignoring the question. Five, Ben and Diego all shared a look. 

“Who is that?”   
“Klaus?”   
“Klaus, I’m talking to you! What are you doing?” Still no response as their brother swayed in ease around the corner and stopped in front of the staircase. A delicate hand rested upon the banister. It was so thin and pale it made all three of them pause. What had been going on with Klaus in their absence? Ben felt a stone drop in his stomach. He had ignored the brother he was closest to in his search for freedom and Klaus was worse for it. 

“Klaus? Can you hear me?” Diego stepped closer and rested a gentle hand on Klaus’ shoulder, jumping when Klaus did. The other man whirled around to the shock of his brothers. 

Klaus looked completely different. His face was sunken. Dark bags grew under his eyes. His hair was long and his fringe came to rest upon his brow. His collarbone peeked out from the gown he was wearing, showing them how thin he truly was. 

“What happened to you? Are you okay?”  
“Come with us, we can find help.” 

Klaus did not respond, nor did he seem to acknowledge his other two brothers, unseeing eyes wandering around Diego’s face. He grinned, his lips splitting and cracking from how dry they were, leaving little drops of blood to well up from within the tender flesh. 

He turned around quickly, his skirt twirling with him. He stumbled leaning more towards the exposed stairway than its landing. Then he was falling. 

Diego, Five and Ben watched in abject horror, unable to do anything as their brother fell down all seventy steps and land on the cold, unforgiving marble floor below. The three rushed down the stairs and knelt around the prostrate figure. 

Ben sobbed as he saw his brother’s delicate neck resting at an odd angle.   
“Oh my god. Does He have a pulse? Please tell me he has a pulse.”

He didn’t.


End file.
